Advances in biology have revealed the ways the environment influences species’ genomes. Even if scientists could produce creatures with DNA identical to that of extinct species, different environmental pressures would alter their genomes in novel ways, raising the possibility that those creatures would differ from the extinct species…

Many scientists believe that although the maintenance of biodiversity benefits ecosystems, changes to the environment could make the reintroduction of extinct species difficult—possibly even ecologically disruptive. …Several commentators in the report raise the concern that the notion that extinct species might be “brought back” could weaken efforts to prevent extinctions. “By proposing that we can revive species through modern technology, we give the impression that species are ‘throwaway’ items,” write Robert DeSalle, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, and George Amato, director of the conservation genomics program at the institute.

Excerpt from Recreating the wild: De-extinction, technology, and the ethics of conservation, https://phys.org/news/, Aug. 2017